Torquemada Read online

  “If we can find the money.” Alvero nodded. “Shall we ride on now?”

  Torquemada led the way. Alvero rode with his head down, puzzled and perturbed, lost in his own thoughts – thoughts that swept him into paths he refused to travel. It was almost with relief that he heard a cry for help. They were on the outskirts of the city now and spurring his horse ahead of the Prior, Alvero saw a struggling group of four men. A tight cluster, they pulled apart as Alvero’s horse thundered down upon them. Three men had attacked a fourth. He stood with his arms covering his head. Even in the brief moment, Alvero noticed the long, black robe that he wore, and took it for granted that the man was a priest. It infuriated him that three cutthroats should leap on a priest in this manner. Suddenly Segovia was his city and the thieves had violated it. He drew his sword and roared at them, swept on to them, driving his horse directly at them and cut at them as he passed by. Behind him, Juan Pomas closed up the gap – as if relieved after so long with Torquemada to find something he did not fear and that he could strike out at. The three thieves ran, and Juan pursued them, cutting at them with his sword. Their screams of pain and their pleas for mercy came back to Alvero as he pulled in his horse and returned to the priest, and there dismounted.

  Torquemada was already there, not dismounted but sitting on his horse, and looking darkly at the man they had rescued; and Alvero saw that the priest was not a priest but a rabbi, grey-bearded, and as different from a priest as one man could be from another. How had he mistaken him, Alvero asked himself, and how had his mind leaped immediately to such a conclusion? Torquemada made no mistake. He and the rabbi faced each other. The rabbi, a man in his middle fifties, an impressive-looking man of medium height, had been hurt. A trickle of blood ran down the side of his head. His hat lay on the ground. Alvero dismounted and picked up the hat. He was highly conscious of Torquemada’s piercing gaze as he returned the hat to the rabbi and asked the man whether he was hurt.

  Dazed, the rabbi appeared to ponder the question and then he said, “I am a Jew.”

  Still breathing hard, still high and excited over the incident, Alvero said, “I didn’t ask you that, I asked you whether you were hurt.”

  “Hurt?” The Jew appeared to ponder this before he replied that he was not hurt, just a single blow on the head. “No, I am all right.”

  Juan had returned now from his pursuit of the thieves and Julio had come up with the pack horse. Still mounted, Juan was watching Alvero curiously. Alvero told him to take the pack horse from Julio and instructed Julio to escort the Jew home. The rabbi shook his head.

  “I don’t need an escort, Don Alvero. The synagogue is only a stone’s throw away.”

  Speaking suddenly and flatly, Torquemada said, “Jew, do I know you? Lift your face, man. You are a rabbi, aren’t you, from the looks of you? Lift your face so I can see it.” Quite deliberately Mendoza took a few steps toward Torquemada and then looked up at him. “I think you know me, Prior Torquemada,” he said.

  “I see you, Rabbi Mendoza,” Torquemada replied harshly. “I would not say that I know you, but I see you.”

  “As you will,” Mendoza agreed with great calm, and then he turned to Alvero and bowed slightly. “Thank you, Don Alvero de Rafel. I thank you and your man. I owe you my life.” With that, he turned and walked off into the gathering darkness. Looking after him, Alvero shuddered – whether with fear or the increasing cold of night, he did not know. Yet he felt moved to say to Torquemada, “He knew my name. How do you suppose he knew my name? I never saw him before, Thomas.” He was not being defensive, yet in spite of himself, he heard the note of fear and protest in his voice.

  Torquemada replied that the cursed Jews knew everything. Directing a long finger after the rabbi, Torquemada said, “His name is Benjamin Mendoza. He is rabbi at the synagogue, and the devil’s handyman. Better if you had let him die, Alvero.”

  Alvero glanced at Juan, who through all of this had said nothing, had only sat his horse and said nothing.

  Then they went on. They stopped at the priory and took their leave of Torquemada, and a little while later Alvero was home.

  All through dinner that evening Catherine de Rafel watched Juan. His silence puzzled and confused her and she wondered whether he had had some kind of falling out with her father, but when she put this to him after dinner, he assured her that it was not the case. He formally requested permission from Alvero to take Catherine into the garden and Alvero, assenting, was relieved to have them gone. He could think of nothing but the encounter with the rabbi, and he had also studiously refrained from any mention of it at dinner. Neither had Juan mentioned it. He caught Juan’s eye but whether or not the boy understood, he did not know. He considered taking him aside and asking him to say nothing to Catherine about what had happened, but the very thought of such an action struck him as being ridiculous.

  Meanwhile, Catherine and Juan went into the garden. It was a cool, lovely evening with the moon in the sky. They sat together on a bench and Catherine yielded herself immediately to the boy’s arms. She was filled with passion but Juan was passionless. He held her without warmth, and as she drew back away from him, she said,

  “Forgive me – but I was worried. With you gone, I couldn’t sleep. I could not sleep and I could not eat.”

  “Because I journeyed to Seville? That makes no sense, Catherine.”

  “Seville could be the other side of the world as far as I know. I’ve lived my whole life here in Segovia.”

  “Seville? Oh, it’s just another place like Segovia, and we went there and now we are back.”

  “What happened there?” Catherine asked him.

  “Well, you know what happened. I was presented to the Queen—”

  “Did she adore you? What did she say to you? What is she like? You must tell me everything. At the Court of the Queen. Oh, that’s exciting! Tell me what she was like.”

  “How many days is it to our wedding?” Juan asked, obliquely.

  “Twenty-three.”

  As if he could not direct his thoughts or control them, Juan said, “There was a man there called Columbus. He was an Italian. He says the world is round, like a ball, and he intends to sail all around it—”

  “What are you talking about, Juan? I know about him. My father told us about him. Didn’t you hear what I said? I said it was twenty-three days to our wedding. Didn’t you ask me that? We were talking about the Queen.”

  “The Queen hated me,” Juan said bleakly. “What can I tell you about her?”

  Then they sat in silence, Catherine puzzled and upset. Meanwhile, inside the house, Alvero and his wife Maria were arguing. They argued more and more frequently of late. It seemed to Alvero that some kind of acid was eating away at their relationship. When he was not with his wife, he felt that he needed her and wanted her and never had he felt it so desperately as during this trip to Seville. At the same time, his disappointment matched his need. When they were alone, and he tried to explain to Maria how he felt about Torqucmada, she refused to believe it.

  “I will not believe it,” she said, “I cannot believe it. It’s not true, that’s all, it’s not true. You’re being a fool, Alvero. You always become a fool over such things.”

  “What things?” he demanded. “You never think twice before you call me a fool, do you?”

  “Don’t shout at me, Alvero,” she said primly.

  “I am not shouting.”

  “Of course you are shouting. A gentleman does not raise his voice.”

  “Will you instruct me on the habits of a gentleman!” Alvero exclaimed. “Do you want me to go out of my mind? I am sick and worried and you instruct me on the habits of a gentleman?”

  “I simply do not believe,” Maria answered, “that anyone who loves us as much as Thomas does would turn against us – in any way. He is my confessor, so how could he turn against us? I have a right to my thoughts. I think you have just taken leave of your senses, that’s all.”

  Pacing back and forth in fr
ont of her, Alvero said hoarsely, “You don’t understand. My God, you don’t understand at all. Now listen, just listen to me, Maria, listen. Torquemada said to me, Alvero – where do you come from? Those words. Just in those words, and suddenly those blue eyes of his were cold as ice. You understand me, like ice. He looked through me into my soul. That’s the gift the man has. There are no secrets in the world that arc barred from him. This is why they made him Grand Inquisitor—”

  Maria smiled and shook her head. “Alvero, he knows where you come from,” she said patiently. “Haven’t we spoken of it a dozen times? He knows that you come from Barcelona. Is it a secret?”

  “Then why did he ask me?”

  “He asked you a simple question, Alvero. I’ve never seen you this way before. I’ve never seen you so shaken. I don’t know what you’re afraid of.”

  “Of course you don’t. I wonder whether you know what the Inquisition is. We go on with our lives, laughing, singing, pretending that the world is the way it always was, but underneath we know, underneath we know that there is a thing in Spain now, called the Inquisition, and day and night we are afraid, and this whole land stinks with fear.”

  “What a thing to say, my husband. Really, what a thing to say. How can you? I don’t know how you can talk that way about Thomas. This is a man of God, who baptized our only child—”

  Alvero came close to her now and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Just one thing, my wife. Do you know why he was summoned to Seville?”

  “You told me,” Maria answered primly. “King Ferdinand made him the Grand Inquisitor, the head of the Holy Inquisition. The more honour to all of us.”

  “My God – do you know what you are talking about?” Alvero asked her.

  “There is no need to talk like that to me. I am no fool. Of course I know what I am talking about.”

  “Do you know what the Inquisition is? Or is it because you know what it is that you can sit there, like a fool, and say the things you do?”

  “How dare you call me a fool!”

  “God help us!” Alvero exclaimed and then turned and strode out of the room.

  Meanwhile, they were all of them in Torquemada’s thoughts. Torquemada felt exalted, without fatigue and without fear. He had no desire to sleep, nor did he have any desire for company, and that night, as he often did, he walked in the pillared passageway of the cloister. The passageway was lit by intense silvery moonlight and in this moonlight, Torquemada paced the circuit of the cloister. Again and again he paced it, back and forth, filled with a strange kind of happiness at his own exaltation. It was not often that he felt exaltation. His was a sombre and oppressed personality, but now he felt alive and excited – close to God – closer to God than he had ever been before.

  4

  BY THE FOLLOWING MORNING ALVERO’S MOOD HAD changed. Not only did a night’s sleep and the bright sunlight of a new day make a difference, but this was the morning of a business meeting that Alvero had scheduled a month before. It had long been in Alvero’s mind to make a compact between a group of merchants in Spain and groups in Italy and in the Netherlands. All three areas had completed a decade of enormous prosperity and Alvero believed that if the vast shipping capacity of the Netherlands and Milan were joined together with the military strength that the merchants of Spain could muster, a commercial triumvirate could come into being that would, in time, become a veritable empire.

  He had fallen asleep to his thoughts and fancies of what it might mean if the Italian Columbus was right, and the westward route to the Indies could be opened; and now, this morning, as he greeted his associates, Hans Van Sitten and Salo Cordoza from the city of Amsterdam, Peri Gomez and Louis Lopez, both of them from Barcelona, and, finally, Dino Aleppo from Milan, he wondered what their reaction would be – and, in a light and amusing manner, he told them what Columbus proposed. Their interest belied his manner of telling. Alvero, sitting at the end of the long refectory table, dressed in sober black velvet and white shirt, olive-skinned, darkly handsome, combining the grace of a Spanish knight and the perspicacity of a merchant, was not to be taken lightly or dismissed; and immediately he had finished, Van Sitten, the Dutchman, asked him how much the Queen needed. Alvero replied that no figure had been established but that it was proposed to equip a small fleet of anywhere from four to ten ships, well armed, well provisioned and with ample goods for trade.

  While Van Sitten calculated, Gomez explained that in spite of the years of prosperity that Spain had experienced, their gold supply had been drained through the constant wars with the Moors.

  “It is a curious contradiction,” Gomez said, “the surfeit of prosperity and the paralysing shortage of coin. If this wild venture of the Italian results in anything, I pray that it will be bullion. We need it desperately. Right now in Spain every coin is counted—”

  “Which I feel,” Aleppo, the Italian, said, “is what is behind the growing power of your Inquisition – which seems to me to partake less of holiness than of greed. When you find a heretic, King and Church confiscate his property and worldly goods and divide them. Now this may enrich the King and enrich the Church, but believe me, Alvero, the effect is temporary and in the end you lose. You’re eating your own flesh.”

  “Precisely.” Van Sitten nodded. “You look to Amsterdam for the money. Is that so, Alvero?”

  “Amsterdam and Milan.” Alvero nodded.

  “As far as Milan is concerned,” Aleppo put in, “you can dismiss that. You can also dismiss Duke Sforza. If my words may be held secretly and in complete trust.”

  “In complete trust,” Alvero said. “Believe me, my friend, what we say here goes no further. There is too much that we talk about that could be a noose around one man’s throat or another’s.”

  “Very well, then,” Aleppo continued. “My own considered opinion is that the Duke of Sforza cannot and will not resist a French invasion. As far as the invasion itself is concerned, the King of France thinks and dreams of nothing else. The French are poor merchants and it is a simple fact of history that the less talented the merchant, the more often his thoughts turn to banditry.”

  “Nevertheless,” Lopez put in, “it would seem to me that you are underestimating Sforza. Milan remains the richest city in Italy. Sforza can hire more mercenaries than Louis can. It’s a simple matter of francs and florins.”

  “Not quite that simple,” Cordoza put in. “Milan is rich, but believe me, friends, Milan does not generate enough money for Sforza to spend. At the same time, let us not forget that Sforza has a hundred thousand florins of our own money – at eight per cent, through Abraham Benalaph, the Jew of Amsterdam. I move that we persuade him to call in the loan.”

  Alvero said quickly, “He has not defaulted. This would make an enemy of Sforza and Sforza still rules Milan, whatever the King of France plans.”

  “Which is exactly what Abraham will say, gentlemen. He will not call in a loan of Sforza’s. Every Jew in Europe would be at his throat if he did. Anyway, to my mind, Milan is less of a risk than Spain. There is a very good possibility that the King of France will honour Sforza’s debts, even if he takes Milan. On the other hand, the King of France himself has been pleading for money and I suggest that we satisfy him to the extent of two hundred thousand florins at twenty per cent interest. That means that in three years the interest alone will cover whatever loss we incur with Sforza. We can act through the Jews in Paris and in Milan itself. On the other hand, if war is delayed, we stand to profit handsomely—”

  “In so many words,” Alvero said, “you suggest that we advance no money to the Queen of Spain. Isn’t that the meaning of what you are saying, Van Sitten?”

  “You tell me, Alvero, old friend, tell me yourself. They have made Torquemada the Grand Inquisitor now. Where does Spain go from here? Do you imagine that the Inquisition will ever be satisfied? Now, mind you, I talk among ourselves and only among ourselves – but, Alvero, is there a Spanish nobleman who cannot find a little bit of Jewish blood, if not in his mo
ther and father, in his grandparents; if not in his grandparents, in his great-grandparents? Where does the Inquisition stop? What is a surety worth? What is a guarantee worth? My own grandmother was half-Jewish. Now I come to Spain as I would come to an enemy land—”

  For Alvero, the sunlight went away and the morning turned cold. By rote, he took part in the conversation and did what he had to do. But the zest had gone. They finished their meeting and said their farewells and all except Van Sitten left. Van Sitten remained to lunch with Alvero. They were old friends. At the luncheon table, Van Sitten was very much the man of the world. He had travelled farther than anyone Alvero knew and he entertained Catherine and Maria with his tales of faraway Russia, of the Holy Land, of the wild Turks and the half-savage Bulgarians. When the talk turned to Columbus, Alvero found him agreeing with the contention of Columbus that the Indies could be found by sailing westward. Yet he held that the distance was, in all probability, so great that no ship existed large enough to carry the men and provisions all the way. In Amsterdam, Van Sitten said, there were Jewish geographers who had estimated the distance around the world. It was much greater than the Italians imagined.

  “Curiously enough,” Van Sitten said, “these are your Spanish Jews. You’ve been sending us Spanish Jews for two hundred years now, Alvero.”

  And then, seeing the expression on Maria de Rafel’s face, Van Sitten asked her whether it troubled her to have him talk so openly about Jews. “The thought of them is not pleasant to me,” Maria said.

  “Then I will not mention the name again,” Van Sitten apologized.

  Afterwards, Alvero walked with Van Sitten to the stables where Julio held his saddled horse. Before he mounted, Van Sitten said to Alvero,

  “I have seen you in better spirits, old friend. I wish I could help you.”

  “Thank you. I am afraid no one can help me.”

  “As bad as that?” asked Van Sitten. Alvero shrugged and Van Sitten said slowly, “It’s two years since I was last in Spain, Alvero. What has happened since then?”